If you look at any leadership job description in high tech – software development, engineering, etc., it will likely say something like “experience leading a high performing team in a hyper growth environment.” But what does that mean? It’s used so much it’s almost cliche now. “High performance” compared to what? If everyone says it, then maybe it’s just “average performance” for the industry.

But there is a way to make your team out-perform everyone else – for certain out perform all those cliche writers out there. And it’s not about performance, it’s about impact. It’s about the impact your team has on the project, product, or business you are working on. Your team can be amazingly productive and generate impressive metrics like the most story points or lines of code or whatever, and yet generate very pedestrian incremental improvements. While another team might not be quite as strong in metrics, but generates surprising, innovative ideas that can move things forward in large quantum leaps. That’s the kind of impact we want.

Here’s an example: I was working at a software company that built an expert system for mental health. It was a vast and complex system. We calculated over 100 million possible unique paths, based on individual users data used for personalization. But when we demoed the system, it all looked so simple, like there was only one path, which is exactly how it was supposed to work. So how could we illustrate the size, complexity, and gravity of our work and make the impression we wanted? So I went through a simple process with the development team, and within a month we had an interactive 3D “galaxy view” where one can zoom, rotate, and fly through our mental health content “universe.” This was a game changer for both the sales and customer success teams. It’s so clear and visually impressive that we no longer struggled to explain our service, and the work that we’d done. It is the one thing everyone remembered – Oh yeah, that’s cool. Can you show the 3D view again?

If you looked at our metrics for those two sprints, it would look like an average month, but the impact was far more, and far reaching. In fact we never actually added a jira ticket for it. It was just an idea, then an experiment, and then it was done.

So how to increase your team’s impact? Ok, this is where things get interesting, because that was not a fluke. And the process is repeatable. It is not consistent or predictable. It doesn’t happen every week, but it continues to happen. How?

It’s all about your team culture.

And step 1 is building psychological safety.

That means you have a fearless team. It means that everyone contributes to the best of their abilities. They speak their minds, make suggestions, take risks, and operate with curiosity, without fear of failure or negative consequences. No one is roasted for saying something unexpected, and no one is thrown under the bus for failing at something. It’s about the experimentation and success and failure that moves things forward. It’s about the support of the team that gives everyone permission to excel.

Ok, so how do you that?

I have 3 principles: Extreme Clarity, Acceptance, and Self Motivation

If you get them right, great things happen, and you can’t stop that train once it gets started. If you get them almost right, things start to improve and the team starts to gravitate the rest of the way.

Each principle needs its own post to properly explain, but at a high level:

Extreme Clarity is about contextual clarity. I means being 360 degrees clear on everything – first and foremost, clarity on the problem to be solved, but also on the importance of the problem, the reasoning behind the problem, the impact on the company, the product, and the customer, how each stakeholder sees the problem and the potential solutions. As a leader this is your work. It can be quite a job, but the results are always better if the team has this level of extreme clarity.

Acceptance is about relationships within your team. A lot of conflict arises because of different viewpoints, different levels of experience, and different areas of expertise. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. A high impact team accepts each member for what they bring, and does not try to change them so everyone thinks alike. You want a team that supports thinking differently. As a leader you need to create an environment of safety for everyone to do their best work. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard. It’s just work.

Self Motivation is about each person on the team finding what motivates them, whether it’s a goal, an ambition, or a satisfying reward from working, and then aligning that with the project, or company goal. Then they just go. As a leader you cannot motivate people, but you can help them find their self motivation. Ok, you can motivate them by cracking the whip and waving the carrot, but it’s way too much effort. What happens when you get tired? Instead, if you can get them to self motivate they become a very easy team to manage. and that motivation is very resilient.

None of this stuff is difficult, but it might take a slight shift in thinking.

Master each principle, and your team will respond in surprising ways. And you’ll look like a genius.

Stay tuned.